MOVIE: The Lone Ranger given a go ahead

When push comes to shove, having someone like Johnny Depp, who brings in billions of dollars in box office money, tends to get the studios to change their minds in regards dropping a proposed movie or giving it the go ahead. Case in point – The Lone Ranger. While it will be very strange to see Depp playing Tonto, Disney has announced it is going ahead with plans to produce the Lone Ranger movie.

It’s interesting that Disney started questioning the budget and the project after Cowboy and Aliens didn’t do as well as studios hoped, thus casting doubt on the Western genre as a money maker. Disney did something similar following the failure of Mars Needs Moms by dropping the “Of Mars” from the title of the upcoming John Carter movie. Someone is certainly suspicious at Disney…

It was originally claimed that the $275 million budget was the cause for shutdown, but a little negotiations, and a budget that is now around $215 million range. Of course Johnny Depp and his billion dollar haul at the box office probably also convinced someone that moving ahead with the project was a good idea, too.

The Lone Ranger will move ahead and begin production February 06, 2012, with the expected release date of May 31, 2013.

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The Author

Stephen Schleicher

Stephen Schleicher began his career writing for the Digital Media Online community of sites, including Digital Producer and Creative Mac covering all aspects of the digital content creation industry. He then moved on to consumer technology, and began the Coolness Roundup podcast. A writing fool, Stephen has freelanced for Sci-Fi Channel's Technology Blog, and Gizmodo. Still longing for the good ol' days, Stephen launched Major Spoilers in July 2006, because he is a glutton for punishment.

You can follow him on Twitter @MajorSpoilers and tell him your darkest secrets...

That’s why in the Teen Titans Go1, and later in the DC Universe the character Joto (which meas F@g00t in Spanish, but menas Fire in Swahili) was changed to Hot Spot. I wish they do the same thing with Tnaga, that means THONG or G-String.

No. Do NOT make another bad Lone Ranger movie! The only way this could be worse is if George Lucas got involved. Stop raping my childhood! BTW I am old enough to have listened to the Lone Ranger when it was on radio. Tonto is a stupid name, it’s Spanish, meaning “Fool” and not an Indian name. But then, it’s always been a problem when crossing the language barrier. The Chevy Nova didn’t sell in Mexico because No va means “Doesn’t Go” in Spanish. The anime movie “Laputa, The Castle in the Sky” had to have the title changed because “Laputa” means something unfortunate in Spanish. But the funniest I ever saw was in the original U.S. broadcast of “Robotech”. On the sequence where the aliens attack earth there are signs on some of the buildings and emblems on the front of the bus which were a shortened version of a word having something to do with transportation. I looked it up at the time and the closest I could come to the word was “having to do with traveling by foot or leg”. The word started with the Japanese word for foot – Ashi – and continued. I don’t remember the rest of the word, this was over thirty years ago, remember, but it continued with the letter t. It was a long word. Therefore, when they put it on the bus and the signs they shortened the word. They dropped the letter “a” at the front and trunticated it after the “t”. Sadly, this word is an expletive in the English language. I taped this thing off the air at the time – in Betamax format. When you froze the tape the unfortunate word could clearly be seen. When I picked it up fifteen years later on laserdisc, they had gone back in and airbrushed out the word on both the signs and the bus emblem. Still, it was hilarious.